The kindness of strangers (part deux)

I've written about this before, but I'm constantly amazed at the kindness of strangers. I'm now an old hand at turning up in a new place and unashamedly using whatever contacts I can muster to meet new people. Hong Kong was no different... I had the name of one girl who invited me to a bbq on a rooftop, literally halfway up a mountain in the New Territories. En route with her and her fiance, we made small talk and chatted about mutual friends, as the KCR cut its way up through rocky ground. A few things in common, we managed to connect our not-so-disparate lives together. An hour's journey and a cab ride later, a fairytale village came into view... a lone pink house, reminiscent of a child's drawing, rose up to greet us, a single vertical window cutting down from the eves with a slither of light. It was cold, but as I shivered and climbed twisty stairs to the sky, I knew it was going to be cool. Over earthy red wine and charred sardines I heard stories of this foreign yet familiar land, inspiration oozing from each word uttered my way. They may not remember me, a girl in a blue shirt and inappropriate shoes, but I'll remember them.

Hong Kong

These few months have been such an eye-opener, so many new experiences. The familiar has been replaced with newness, and I'm not shocked by much nowadays... But Hong Kong was an awesome experience. It's everything that Singapore isn't - busy, noisy, bustling, dirty around the edges, full of neon signs. I loved everything about it, from paper lanterns suspended in the dark air, to skinny trams cutting through traffic. I hope I get to go back.

Buried alive...

I’ve never been one of those high-maintenance girls who spends half her salary on make-up and pampering, but I do love the odd treat, like anyone. All that kind of stuff is cheap here in Singapore, so when my visitors arrived they were keen to take advantage. A pedicure and manicure later, we were really getting into this pampering lark, and someone suggested a facial… Ahhh, lush, I thought. Just imagine lying in a dark room with cucumber on your eyes and gentle music…

A door slams in the distance and footsteps move along a corridor behind my head. I hear muffled voices, and two people laughing. The sounds drift away and I’m alone again in my head. My heart is beating fast under the blanket and the temperature is rising. I try to relax and think calm thoughts, but I’m overwhelmed. I can’t see anything; my eyes and mouth are sealed shut. Two small holes have been left for my nose, and as I reach my hand up to my face I realise that the weight on my face is two inches thick. The hardening mass reaches from my forehead to the top of my ribcage, and it’s hot, not just warm, but hot. This was meant to be relaxing, so why do I feel like I’m a prisoner? I try to be brave but all I keep thinking is “I’m being buried alive and paying for the privilege”. Twenty minutes later I’m set free, and walking outside to meet my aunt at a café I start to cry… was this what they meant when they said “pain is beauty?” If so I’d rather be ugly.

Busy busy bee!

These last few weeks have been pretty busy. My inbox and washing basket are full and I’m running to catch up on emails, friends, phone calls, birthdays etc. Sometimes life moves so fast that sleep eludes and everything is rushed. The start of April saw a busy week with all of our key contacts from Asia-Pacific coming to Singapore for networking. I spent most of the week chatting to people and snatching the odd glimpse at my email.

Oh! My God! I Miss You!

Too many people!

If the definition of an "extrovert" is a person who gets energy from being around lots of new people, then I'm definitely an introvert. I love people, I adore my friends and am missing you all like crazy, but talking to people I don't know isn't relaxing. One or two are ok, but these past few weeks I've met SO many new people that my E-Q is getting full. I've been travelling with work and this week all our regional contacts from the Asia-Pacific are here, so there are lots of new faces. I was talking to a guy earlier and it was as if my brain had the plug pulled on it, white noise flowed through my head and crackled. I think I need a holiday... I've got one coming next week when my mum and two aunts are coming to stay, so I'm looking forward to that...

The journey so far...

Now I've been to a few more places, I've apparently been to 9% of the world! Not very impressive, hey? I'm still hoping to add a few more before London calls me back in the summer.

Word Cloud

Whatever will they think of next? Here is a 'word cloud', whatever that is... a clever computer scanned my blog and picked out some words to put in this 'cloud'. Funny how many of them refer to food... hmmm, getting hungry...

Geometric Diversion

When life is speeding past tired eyes as a car on the freeway at dusk, I find solace and peace in the simplest things, like browsing Marimekko fabrics on the web...

Lazy Sunday

I'm offically a lazy bum. It's 8pm on Sunday evening and I haven't left the house since arriving back from the airport at 4pm on Friday... that's a lot of hours! All I've achieved is:

• writing blog (highly productive and worthwhile activity)
• eating eggs
• doing two loads of washing (yawn...)
• drinking approximately 12 cups of tea
• learning to make a 13" x 13" party cake complete with icing (people pay money for that don't you know)
• eating pork and rice and spicy eggplant
• sneezing, a lot
• calling some friends and relatives (high point scoring)
• tidying room
• unpacking suitcase
• writing letter to friend
• drinking one glass of red wine (lush)
• eating small packet of crackers
• finishing Kafka on the Shore (disappointing ending).

Not bad for a weekend lazing around the house...

Zzz zzz zzz

I have just woken up after manufacturing zzz's for 19 hours! Can you believe it? That's almost three night's worth of sleep in one hit. I knew I was tired, but that's got to be a record? I didn't sleep much on the flights back from Almaty, partly due to being woken up to eat beef curry at 4am (what were they thinking?!), and being stuck next to a very wriggly Malaysian on the final stretch. My brain has had so much stimulation and so little rest for the past ten days, that I'm just exhausted... am going to blog for a bit then, hmm, let me see, might take a nap...

Almaty, Kazakhstan

Arriving at a place I'd never heard of until a few months back, in a country I knew little about, with a language I can only say four words in, I was struck by a feeling that is becoming more common with each month that passes outside the UK... I'm a stranger here. My visit to Almaty is a humbling experience. It seems to me that Central Asia, this stretch along the Silk Route, is somewhere that the world has forgotten about. Whenever the world map pops up in my heard, I'm ashamed to say that I seem to get to India a bit too quickly, without even seeing the huge expanse of countries between China and Russia. On this trip we met people from Uzebekistan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Afganistan, Turkmenistan... Places I hadn't given a second thought, until now.

I've never been to Russia, so was surprised at the intensity of the Russian language. To my British ear, the Russians sound as if they are cross, all the time! It was hard to get used to, especially when I would say something meaningful and hear the translator (to my ear) shouting it back in Russian!

Kazakhstan was part of the former USSR until 1990, when it gained independence. They are the lucky ones, the country has huge oil fields and oil money will pay for the country to build up its economy, as it's starting to do already. Immigration is up 30% as people from neighbouring countries come to find a better life.

The landscape is bleak, yet hauntingly beautiful - the city of Almaty is surrounded by snow-capped, fairytale mountains. Yet there are signs everywhere of the previous political system and the darkness behind the country's newfound economic wealth. Women in rags with pale children beg at the roadside, poverty affects the old and the infirm, young teenagers are affected by cancer and illness due to toxic water and earth contaminated by nuclear testing during communism. I met a 15 year old girl with breast cancer, stomach cancer and and a weeping tumour on her innocent face. These people are desperate for something, for change, and I believe that change is on its way in the form of hope and trust in God. Those we met were hungry for newness, for their faith to grow, for more of God. In a land where life is often hard, maybe it's easier for them to trust and have complete faith in the one above. In the West we trust ourselves, our own ability to look after our families, to plan out our own lives, but in doing so maybe we lose something - the reality that life is short, we're here for a purpose, even if things are tough.

This trip has changed me, and given me a heart for that region, for the people I had forgotten existed. I hope I'm never as ignorant again.

I'm starving, I could eat a...

How many times have I said that in my life? Hundreds probably...

Little did I know that it would come back to bite me one day! One of Kazakhstan's delicacies is horse meat, and we were presented with some on the first evening we arrived... Here's me eating a bit..

It tasted pretty good, better than I was expecting - like very salty beef. Two days later we were given horse and pasta for lunch, that was equally as good, apart from the 'horse milk' that accompaigned it. I'm ashamed to say that having eaten duck's brains, sheep stomach and all kinds of unappetising stuff, the adventurous part of my tongue switched off, and I refused it politely. Seeing everyone else's faces, it was the right choice...

Beijing on foot

Something you learn pretty quickly in China is that a zebra crossing doesn't mean ANYTHING. I can't understand why the government wasted money on white paint when the stripes that are painted so neatly across wide roads don't mean a thing! You pretty much have to pray and run across before a car or taxi runs you over.

I decided to be brave though, and took a walk from my hotel along one of the main roads across the city. Walking west on a Sunny Sunday afternoon I took in some of the sights.

After about ten minutes, the sky was full of kites! Their bright colours stood out against the cornflower blue sky:

They were attached to their owners standing in this park, more like a sculpture garden:

Later this little vehicle caught my eye... it's a disabled person's way of getting around the city.

Life in grey

Life can be quiet and leave me alone sometimes, not much happens and much of the day is lost in my own thoughts. Not so in China though! Since arriving a few days ago (feels like forever), every minute has been full to bursting with newness. It's my first visit to China, and my first experience of doing business with the Chinese, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise, but I'm still astounded at this sprawling city.

The city is shrouded in grey. A sandstorm from Mongolia brought a fine covering of grey-white powder across the buildings and cars, and the sky was full of clouds (or pollution), pretty depressing.

I was up early to check out of my gorgeous Western-style business hotel and move two miles down the road to a cheaper place. It's nice but feels much darker. My room is shrouded in dark wood and I feel like Miss Marple tapping away at the desk.

I'd hoped to get to the Great Wall or the Forbidden City while I'm here, but time is running short and we have to work on Saturday, so the precious sights will have to save for another time. I'm lucky to be here, so I shouldn't complain, and I've seen a side of China most tourists probably wouldn't ever see. My Chinese is non-existent, so even though I can read some kanji from learning Japanese all those years ago, most of the time I feel like such an outsider. There's a whole world out there that I don't understand, I haven't even scratched at the surface.

At dinner today I sat next to a man who was the first ever Chinese allowed to marry a foreigner. He met his wife in the seventies when China and the US had a cultural exchange - children of American diplomats and senators were sent to China for the first time. He fell in love with an American, but was refused permission to marry her until the Premier gave his approval... a symbol of a crack opening up in China's consciousness to shine its light to the outside world.

Ok, it's getting weirder!

Yesterday had to be up there in the most bizarre days of my entire life... After some pretty straightforward meetings in the morning and tasty Beijing beef noodles for lunch, my colleague and I got a call to say another meeting had been set up for us with publishing house. We didn't know anything about it, but decided to go with the flow and jump in the taxi...

An hour later we arrived at a pretty unexciting office - ten desks, ten phones, ten computers, ten minutes looking around, not quite sure what we were looking at! We then got back in the taxi and drove an hour back into town to the head office, where were greeted enthusiastically by four Chinese men who proceeded to tell us how great their company was... My mind was ticking and reality began to hit - they wanted to publish and distribute our stuff. We were then taken out to an expensive Sezchuan restaurant. I've recently developed an ability to eat things that actually make me wretch, it's been pretty useful on this trip! The only strange food I ate at this meal was pig's liver - I wouldn't have touched it but it was already on my plate and I was kind of committed!

The Chinese do business late into the night, over dinner and lots of drinking... I luckily managed to make my quarter glass of 52% proof rice-wine last all evening, but some weren't so lucky. Almost at the end of the meal, the guy next to me, who'd been knocking back the stuff, proceeded to vomit right onto the dinner table! It was awful! That brought the meal to an abrupt end and half an hour later I feel into bed, exhausted, head spinning with the craziness of the day, and my mind shouting 'Enough! No more stimulation! Please!' Let's see what tomorrow brings...

The weirdest city, ever

This few months is providing a milliard of firsts... this week, my first visit to China. I'm writing this blog from Beijing, in a hotel which could be anywhere in the world, so generic is the interior. Step outside, however, and I'm in a place foreign to my English eyes. Having arrived last night, I was suddenly rendered illiterate - unable to even read a road sign, let alone pronounce it correctly! Maybe that experience is good for me and can remind me of what it's like to be in a foreign place. My impressions so far of this huge city are mixed... I'm here for work, and I've met the kindest most open people, yet there's an oppressive atmosphere here... I can't explain it, but the smog that covers the city, even on this sunny, crisp Spring day, seems to penetrate my skin and makes me feel uneasy. There's lots to love and explore though, the food is fantastic, soft dim sum for breakfast and a Chinese banquet for dinner - you can't do better than that! I'm hoping to get to the Great Wall of China at the weekend. Though the myth that it can be seen from space has been dispelled, I'm still excited about walking along one of the Great Wonders of the World. It's times like these, alone late at night in an unfamiliar hotel room, when I'm reminded how lucky I am, that this world we live in is full of newness and the kindness of strangers, if we just get out of our comfort zone to look for it.

Kismis Green

The road where I'm staying in Singapore is called 'Kismis Green'. I like to think of it as 'Kiss-mis', far more romantic. It was only when the cab driver who took me home the other day said that all the Kismis roads here are so called because the person who named them couldn't spell 'Christmas'! Kinda cute :-)

Wibble wobble

It’s been a funny week so far… after a little wobble at the weekend (probably brought on by not enough sleep or getting out of bed on the wrong side), which had me thinking ‘why am I here in Singapore? What am I doing? Why don’t I go back to London?’, I’m now loving it again. Every week that passes by I see more of this country and experience the kindness of the people. Because everyone speaks English, well, Singlish to be precise, lah, it’s easy to ignore the cultural differences and expect things to be as they are at home. But Asia is Asia, and I’m only just beginning to understand the Chinese culture. Living with a Chinese family is probably the best thing I’ve done in my whole adult life, just being with them and chatting about their experiences, views on the world etc has opened up my mind to a whole other world. Lucy, who’s the same age as my mum and just as lovely, is teaching me to cook Chinese food. So far I can make Hainese Chicken Rice, Char Siew (Chinese Roast pork), Roti Jalu (India lacy pancakes) and dumplings! Legend. When I’m back I promise to have you all round for a feast…

Ooo it's warm out here!

I've been meaning to write something about the weather for ages, but have procrastinated as I didn't want to appear like I was bragging or anything. It's been between 28 and 34 degrees since I arrived and it's now hotting up even more. The thing is, the heat doesn't bother me in itself, in fact it's quite nice to be wearing flip flops all the time, but couple that with the damp humidity and you're in a whole world of trouble! I hadn't really experienced humidity like it until coming here, I suppose it is a tropical climate though! I've adopted various tactics from the locals to aclimatise to the stickiness:

• Wearing two layers rather than one, the bottom one absorbs all the sweat, even though you do get a bit hotter
• Putting something called a 'thirsty hippo' into my wardrobe. This hippo absorbs the moisture from the air and stops my clothes going mouldy
• Putting a damp cloth on the floor in my room before I go to bed so that I don't wake up like a shrivelled orange from the air con
• Moth balls ... hmmm. All my clothes smell of them, but better than being holey
• Don't walk anywhere, ever, if you can help it. Not even to the end of the road

If you're reading this wearing four layers and a hat to keep the draught from coming in then I apologise. I would change places with you tomorrow.... ummm, can you hear the insincerity in my tone?

Japanese wisdom...

"Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time."

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Ballet

I finally made it to ballet this week! I just couldn't live without it, my legs were turning into jelly and my back was getting all lazy and rounded. So, with anticipation and a nervous excitement I ventured to Tanjong Pagar to be the new girl in the elementry class at a performing arts school. I love ballet, I can't explain it in words, but something in me is addicted to the combination of beauty and structure that it entails. I'm rubbish, and I'll never be a ballerina, but in pointed feet and graceful arms I've found a home, something to calm and soothe and warm my heart. There were only seven of us in the calm, white studio, an attentive teacher encouraging and faithful to the art that has captured these few girls in a hot city. I'm about 100% happier now, I must be easily pleased :-)

Frothy tea anyone?

Starbucks really are missing out on one mother of a marketing opportunity… Haven’t they heard of a tea-chino or a milo-chino, or a horlicks-chino for that matter? Obviously not. Well I think they’re missing out. Today I tentatively stuck my neck out and tried a ‘tea-chino’ in my local Muslim Indian seafood restaurant. For starters, I caused a bit of a stir by virtue of being a Caucasian woman dining alone, but once I’d managed to establish that I knew what to order and how to pronounce ‘roti prata’ in just the right accent, the over-attentive waiter with bad moustache left me alone. A few seconds after ordering (better service than Starbucks), a beer mug of frothy tea, with a head that deserved the glass, appeared in front of Jules’ eager eyes. I’ve never fancied frothy tea, assuming it was caused by lime scale and unidentifiable bits in the kettle, but this was lush… sweet with an illusion of ginger somewhere in there… The ladies at work think I’m really adventurous, maybe I’ll show them just how adventurous I am and order a ‘horlicks dinosaur’* next time…

* that’s a little mystery for you all… answers on a comment and dinner to anyone who can guess what it is. (Singaporeans not allowed to answer!)

Clementi, Thursday, 8.53pm

Ebony sky
Five stars, seven
Palm trees,
A slither of moon, silver
I see,
From my water vantage.

Splish, splash, my ears tickle,
Hands pull through cool treacle.

Alone in my paradise,
I marvel,
At cool water,
And a bikini
In February.

Miss you, you miss...

Ahhh how I miss certain things from home... I decided to make a list of what they were to weigh up if it was really all that bad living without them for six months:

• Unsweetened soya milk (everything here is full of sugar)
• Green & Blacks, though was sent some recently so kinda ok
• A friend in a stripy jumper and flat cap
• Houmous, yeah baby, the Greeks have yet to make it to my neighbourhood
• Oat cakes - I actually paid S$6.50 for some recently, that's the same price as two chicken dinners
• Being able to walk for more than five minutes without being drowned in sweat and ready to sit down
• A duvet to sleep under (way too hot)
• You
• Ballet, I miss it so much!
• My bike, especially the basket.

That's pretty much it, so not going too badly. I think I'll survive!

Aussie Archtitecture

Turn a corner in this great Australian city, and your eyes will no doubt great something of brilliant man-made beauty... the photos don't do justice to the city holding this year's Commenwealth games next month, but you get the idea...

This silver cubist form holds the state art collection... not quite as impressive as the Tate Modern, but then I'm probably biased!

A big artichoke? Or something more ephemeral?

Blogiversary

I'd like to coin a new word... 'blogiversary'. Today it's almost exactly one year since my first posting on this blog... The idea came one weekend when I was away with some friends, and I resolved to write something, anything slightly creative, every day. After a tenative start and some re-assessing throughout, here I am, a year later loving every minute of it. So if you're reading this thanks for your kind words and your time, it makes me smile when I hear that people are enjoying reading my reflections...

Talking of reflections, here's one of me in Federation Square, Melbourne...

How's the pressure m'am?

Now that I lay my little head in a country where the bus fare to work costs 34p and a great meal costs less than £1, there’s a little more room for ‘luxuries’. Feeling like a Stepford Wife I guiltily enjoyed a pedicure after work last week, the first in my 26 and a bit years on this green earth. Sitting reading Asian woman’s magazines with my feet in a rose petal bubble bath, I was temporarily transported into someone else’s life. I tried to imagine what it would be like not to work, but to have all day every day to entertain myself as a lady of leisure. Every weekend I wish that there was an extra life, and I love a holiday as much as the next person, but I really don’t know what I’d do to pass the time… there’s only so much lunching and pampering one can stand. Anyhow, I digress. I left 45minutes later leaving a gorgeous pile of dead skin on the floor that looked rather like desiccated coconut. My toenails are sporting a very fetching shade of pale green, and my heels are soft as a cushion.

So toenails all sparkly, I was feeling slightly too excited for my own good when myself and two friends decided to book into the 'Javanese Massage Hut' at the end of my road for a one hour 'full body' massage. I've had a 'full body' before, so thought I knew what to expect. I'm pretty o-fey with being almost entirely naked in front of a complete stranger, and anyway, there were going to be two friends lying next to me. So in we go, laughing hysterically at the paper knickers and loving the smell of the herbal oils. What none of us were prepared for though was the Javanese definition of 'full body'. I know there are men reading this so I won't elaborate, but let's just say there was touching in places I wasn't expecting...

Places I've been to, tra la la...

Now that I've seen a bit more of the world, here's a map showing the countries I've visited... it's a pitiful 8% of the world, but I'm hoping to add a few more over the next few months...

G'day!

My gorgeous friend Graham once went out with an Austrian girl who used to complain that everyone's view of her home country was based solely on The Sound Of Music. I remember thinking this was quite funny, and then realising in horror that my view of Austria really was based on the singing Von Trapp family! I was ashamed and tried to rectify the situation with a quick google search and a vow never to be in the same narrow-minded place again.

This morning as I woke to the sun stretching his fingers through an unfamiliar window, I heard the sound of a small animal screaching outside... My brain works on go-slow at that time of the morning but today the realisation I was 'down under' kinda hit me at top speed. (I'm the furthest away from home I've ever been in my entire 26 and a bit years of existence, yet everything feels normal. Anyway, I digress.) The lady I was staying with had told me that the screaching sound was the noise of 'little possums' (said in a Dame Edna-esque voice!) outside. "Do you know about possums?" she asked? "Oh yeah," I said. "Hannah from Neighbours adopted one once..." Arrrggghhh!! I suddenly realised that my view of Australia was based almost wholly on a bad tv soap... Must be more cultured and wise. Must be more cultured and wise...

Internet Junkie

Do you find your life incredibly liberated by, yet stupidly restrained by the internet? Take this week, I have a ‘to do’ list that’s a fairly impressive length, and more than half of the stuff on there requires surfing before I can smugly draw a tick in the little box I draw next to each item. It’s not that I mind, in fact I really love looking stuff up online, it avoids travel agents, going to the train station, speaking to real people about my bank account, but it’s also really anti-social. I figure I could spend two evenings this week and still not get all the stuff I want done finished. Hmmm. What to do? I could always get up really early, go to Starbucks and connect to wi-fi and drink cappuccino, but hang on, I’m walking the dog, and if I were to get up any earlier I’m sure my legs and arms will fall off before I even made it into the shower, they’re so heavy early in the morning! Well, maybe I’ll just relax and hang loose and look forward to the weekend in Australia before I tick all the boxes…

Monkey monkey

Well here's a picture of a monkey made of pink flowers hugging a post in a shopping centre... now you don't see that very day, do you?! I think this particular monkey had something to do with Chinese New Year, but you can't be too sure.

Anyway, the exciting news is that I'm off to Melbourne tomorrow! Can hardly contain my excitement, I'm sure I'll be awake all night with excitement. Speaking of being awake all night, I have been having trouble sleeping due to being woken up by by a fat cockroach running across my floor two nights running.... and you thought you were jealous of the tropical climate!

Loving Life

I’ve just had the most lovely weekend ever… sometimes life is so good that I can’t quite believe it, if I shut my eyes I almost believe it won’t be there when I open them again. I’ve been here for just over a month and things are getting more familiar… I have a routine, (including walking the aforementioned pooch), and have established a couple of favourite lunch places, as well as a much longer list of things I’d really rather not ever eat again in this life… I’ve gone swimming loads, loving the warmth of the water and the sun on wet skin, and have developed the habit of carrying my bikini around with me on the off chance I’ll be invited somewhere with a pool (happens quite often!) The lifestyle here is certainly one I could get used to. I miss my friends and family from home, and the Tate Modern (!) but apart from that I’m happy. Love it! As my gorgeous friend Tana would say!

More tea?

My landlady is a top cook, she thinks nothing of whipping up four dishes for dinner in half an hour, all with ingredients I haven’t even seen before, let alone tasted… so you can imagine the fear when she asked me to teach her ‘British cooking’. Now, us Brits now that while we can all whip up an Uncle Ben’s sweet and sour or a thai curry with ready made paste, it’s another thing to be Delia Smith with the old beef and Yorkshires… Rather than starting with something complicated I suggested scones, even though they’re really a bit boring and don’t take much effort to do. She absolutely loved it! We made about 80 on the table in the garden, no joke, flour everywhere and the smell of baking competing with next door’s fried bee hoon. Hilariously we then sat down to a cream tea with Earl Grey and jam and cream… it was ace. I thought the English cream tea was all over until I found that while I was out the following day, her and her husband set up a table in front of a row of sunflowers in the garden. They brought out the best china and set up the scones on a cake stand, donned their best clothes and took photos of themselves eating the scones!! Don’t you just love it! I was glad to be of service to the Chinese community. In return I learnt how to make wantons, be warned, they look easy but mine tasted of glue.

Pix at last...

Can you believe it! I’ve finally managed to get a laptop which means I can download my photos and make you all envious of blue skies (except when it’s raining), lying by the pool all weekend and eating unidentifiable food.. talking of which, here’s a few pix of Chinatown at Chinese New Year including some of the ‘delicacies’ that are eaten/endured at this time of year. The green pear shaped things are pomelos, kinda like a big sweet grapefruit, and the stuff hanging up is Chinese sausage ... yum.

Rain

So what’s new? It’s getting hotter here… the rain has stepped up in defense of the rising temperatures too. I don’t think I can ever call the trickling from the sky that we get in England rain again. Walk one metre in Singapore’s afternoon monsoon and your clothes become part of you cos they’re so stuck to your skin. Hmmm. I’ve learnt that forgetting your umbrella is the equivalent of social suicide. If it’s raining you’re basically stuck where you are until it stops.. fine if the storm lasts ten minutes, but not so funny if it pours for an hour. Catching a cab in the rain is also a feat similar to not falling off the luge in the winter Olympics.

Koala

Just got back from a hot weekend in Kuala Lumpur. I'm still not completely set-up computer-wise, so you'll have to imagine the photo of me at the Petronas towers... KL was cool. I hadn't realised how this tiny island can start to feel a bit claustrophobic... everything here is squeaky clean (I saw a man cleaning the road signs the other day), and I was desperate for a bit of raw reality. So I set off with my toothbrush, sunscreen, bikini (well a girl can dream!) and hopes for a change of scenery and the 'real' Asia. The bus journey takes five hours and was better than any I've ever taken in the UK, this was no National Express. The seats were huge and reclined, we were served lunch and snacks of watermelon and red bean dumplings at various stages along the way and best of all the journey actually took the time it said it would.

Highlights of KL included:

- buying a pair of really nice sandals for less than 4 pounds
- eating chey keow in Chinatown just next to a lady killing frogs by whacking them on the head with a hammer (hang on, that shouldn't be in the highlights section, you call yourself an editor?!)
- sleeping for a really long time in a king size bed (yes on my own!)
- watching or should I say listening to the lion dance for Chinese New Year as it went through Starbucks to bring 'luck and prosperity'

Walkies

Do you ever find yourself in a comedy situation and wonder how you got there? This seems to happen to me more regularly than I consider funny, but hey, makes life more interesting. I asked myself this exact question this morning as I was dragging a very old dog through a park at 7.30 am. Now, for those of you who know me, even a little bit, you'll know that Jules + early morning = bad idea. Most of my good friends have learned not to even try to engage me in conversation until I've been up for at least three quarters of an hour. I'm grumpy in the morning, I know it and I don't pretend to be otherwise. Also, I don't really like dogs. (I was going to say I 'hate' them, but I think hate is a very strong word. A friend of mine tells her kids to say something isn't their 'cup of tea' as it's more polite... so to clarify, dog's aren't my cuppa of choice.) So when my new neighbour asked if I'd mind walking her old boxer dog while she's on holiday, I said yes. What was I thinking?! I can only assume that the rational part of my brain was otherwise engaged in watching a gekko or something. So, for the next two weeks the girl with clothes hastily thrown on, pulling an old dog through Cheng Seung past the ladies doing tai chi is (unfortunately), me.

The case of the invisible photos

Everyone wants to see photos... I'm sorry to say that I haven't quite got 'round to installing the software from my camera to upload them... Watch this space though, I may become organised overnight and treat you all to a colourful slideshow!

Things I've Eaten over Chinese New Year

(Knowingly or unknowingly, not sure which is better):

Fish heads
Sea cucumber
Liver (raw)
Chicken feet
Dried oysters
Black moss
Insects (though later realised they actually weren't supposed to be in the dish)
Abalone (anyone who can tell me what it is wins a prize)
Pigs' insides (didn't ask which bit)
Some glutunous stuff wrapped in peanuts

Oh for a ham sandwich....

Meatballs

The other day it was one of my new work colleague's birthdays. I only found out on the day itself and was immediately concerned about my lack of card/present/bunch of flowers for the birthday girl. But no need to fear, it soon transpired that no one else had anything to give her either... perhaps they're not that into presents, or maybe it's too near to Chinese New Year for anyone to bother. Time went on and someone did suggest that we take her out for lunch, and a discussion started about where we should go. I was only half-listening, I've been involved in many of these discussions with my London workmates, and know how boring they can get. Also, since being here I often can't quite tune my ear into the place names and the conversation is often half conducted in Mandarin. So 1pm comes, my stomach is saying 'I'm hungry but please no more carbs!' and we clamber into a taxi. Ten minutes later we arrive at our destination... it can't be, no. Someone's joking! No, really this is it, we're here. Where did we go for lunch guys? You'll never guess... Ikea! Yes, the Swedish furniture shop! It seems that meatballs and salmon hollandaise are the height of trendiness in these parts, maybe the equivalent of Itsu at Brompton Cross...

So when I'm back and offer to take you for a birthday lunch, just watch out, we may be buying a kitchen on the way out.

Everything and nothing

So, ten or so days since leaving the UK, what has changed? Well, everything and nothing. I'm here in the office with a decaf soya latte from Starbucks. Earlier, I chatted to the girl at the coffee counter about the weather in London (everyone asks how cold it is... but how can you describe what four degrees and wind chill feels like to people who live so near the equator?), and then stepped out into the (warm) rain to go back the office. I'm here at my computer and as I look up I can see photos of people I know, books I've worked on, resources I've helped produce. At lunch today I ate dried chilli chicken and rice, which came with a rather nice fried egg on top... a bit of a change from Pret A Manger. I'm craving carrot sticks and houmous, and wholemeal bread with seeds in it. I'm sure I can buy all those things but it's not really the authentic Asian experience.

What'ya gonna be?

A new country offers constant scope for comparison with the familiar. Things I've accepted as 'normal' are up for questioning, and other things are just plain weird.

Every bank in Singapore seems to be running some kind of ad campaign along the lines of: 'What if your child exceeds your expectations? Plan now for a great education.' One shows a photo of heavily pregnant woman with the caption, 'Doctor? Engineer? Start saving now to release your child's potential.' Something in me revolts at the sentiment behind all of this - that people are valued because of what they do or achieve, rather than who they are. Why doesn't the ad say 'Great friend? Caring teacher? Start loving now to protect your child's mental health'? The implication is that you wouldn't be proud of producing kids who don't make it to the top of some career structure. I've heard that deaf people here are given a really raw deal - some only get primary education because there's a feeling that someone who can't hear is never going to achieve anything anyway, so it's best just get them out to work as fast as you possibly can. Maybe I've got it wrong and I'm sure (well hoping) that the ad man has more to do with this than the general sentiment, but I'm not so sure.

King Bean

If you want to be hip, be a soya bean! Everyone loves the humble bean in Asia. I love soy and I'm in Asia , so I guess that's a good thing... At home people react with a mixture of horror, disdain or annoyance when I order soya milk in a coffee shop. I'm sure they suspect I'm only doing it to be cool, or different, it's so trendy to be intolerant to something nowadays. But here, soya is so cool! Everyone loves it! Soya drinks come in cans and are proudly chilled next to the coca-cola and green tea in restaurant fridges. I must admit, I still haven't got to the stage of drinking it straight, but stranger things have happened... Downtown there's a whole shop/cafe that only sells stuff made from soya... fake ice cream, bread with soy in it, cakes, a zillion flavours of soya drinks. I can't imagine it catching on in London as most people I know wretch at the thought of the lack of animal fat in their white stuff.

Naked Truth

Can you believe it? A man got arrested here recently for walking around naked. Hmmm. Ok, a bit harsh I thought, but then it's not really great to be scaring small children is it? He might not have been very attractive either... Hang on, the story continues.... he was arrested for walking around naked where? No, you can't be serious? IN HIS OWN HOME!! Imagine. He's now been sent for psychological testing and will be fined or sent to prison for this indescretion. I'm now getting worried... it's so flipping hot here, what if I inadvertently let the towel slip as I'm stepping into my room after a shower? Eeekkk! Better buy a bath robe...

The Kindness of Strangers

I remember thinking before I came out to Singapore that for the first time in ages, possibly in my whole life, I was going to have to rely on the kindness of strangers. When you come to a country knowing not a soul there's little else to do. I can honestly say that I think it's going to be good for me. In some ways my life in London was very much set – not in stone, but in routine, and in the cold country there's always a plethora of people to call up and go out for coffee with. This Sunday I was forced to swallow my 'everyone knows me' identity and start again… I met up with a couple who are friends of friends from home, (in fact, they're famous, every time I'd mentioned Singapore their names came up.) They don't know me, nor I them, yet they were awesome! They completely looked after me and didn't seem to mind as I tagged onto their day out with an ex-pat family. In a few hours we were drinking red wine and playing mah jong on the porch in the last of the balmy evening's light. Ahhhh. The grey London sky is a million miles away.

Arrival

Well, here I am in Asia! I arrived at Changi Airport, jet lagged, hot and slightly apprehensive, to a wall of pink and white orchids and people vacuuming the already-clean carpet vigorously. Coming to a new country there’s a mixture of emotions – a constant battle between nervousness and excitement. Every new experience is evaluated again and again as I try to answer the question 'Am I going to like it here?' A few days on, rested and acclimatised I can safely say that I think I'm gonna love it… more later.

Visa

There's nothing like a trip to the Indian Embassy to increase your heart rate on a Friday morning. I've just spent the best part of four hours sitting in a crowded room with about two hundred others, all shoving and getting stressy, all for an A6 greenish sticker in a passport that will allow me to enter the Dairylea shaped country as many times as I wish for the duration of half a year. I knew it was going to be a laborious task and as such had been putting it off for days until the realisation dawned that my passport wasn't going to walk to The Strand on its own.

At one point, a man in a black beanie hat, a bomber jacket and slightly-too-tight jeans that show his fat thighs to be, err, fat, strides confidently up to the counter. I watch him suspiciously. Now, I know that he was behind me in the queue and that there were at least 300 other poor souls before us, and my calculation tells me that I'm not going to get to the counter for at least another two hours. I'm trying not to get cross when the very stressed lady behind the counter realises what he's up to and sends him to "Please sit down sir and wait your turn like everybody else! What makes you so important?" Ahhh... peace and love and harmony.

Leaving

Is it easier to leave knowing that I'm coming back?
I'm not sure...
I want to change, grow, live a new life
I'm slightly scared that I might change beyond recognition
And outgrow my old life, here.

Packing chaos

Well, here we are in January 2006! Every year I'm astounded by how shocked I get that another year has passed and we're on the cusp of another twelve months. This year feels quite different from other new years though - I'm on the verge of a huge change, moving to Asia and seeing my entire physical, social, personal and work life transform before my eyes. I'm slightly scared, but also hungry for newness. I can't wait to have a new view from my window, a different feel to the sheets on my bed, new voices to hear, food to eat. I'm gonna miss London, my incredible friends, Green & Blacks Maya Gold chocolate, Earl Grey tea and the feel of my wooly coat around my shoulders. I'm sure those things will be replaced by others though... and I'll be back before you know it!

Waste

Have you ever spent a whole lot of energy on something only to realise it was all a complete waste of time?

Things I hate about Christmas

Spending money on presents I know the recepient doesn't really want
Receiving presents I don't really want or need or like
Parsnips
Rubbish trains costing more than normal to take twice as long without a seat
Being away from people I love
Christmas pudding

Things I love about Christmas

Mince pies
Port
Guilt-free TV watching
Cold hands and a warm fire
Family
Cracking nuts
Sparkly lights on trees on the South Bank
Champagne
Loving people
The promise of hope in a gold package

Arrrggghhh!

Where has the time gone? It feels like the last few weeks have been swallowed up by a large whale, just like that, gallons of minutes whoosing into its open mouth. I suppose blogging is a bit like having a pet, you like looking at it but the maintenance can sometimes get a bit laborious, and before you know it people are asking why you haven't fed the screen recently. Perhaps I'll get reported to the Royal Society for the Protection of Blogs.

Asian Adventure

Well everyone, brace yourselves! I've got some news... (those who know me well should probably sit down for this next bit) I'm going to Singapore for six months in January! Soon I'll be wearing summer clothes though it's January and eating asian food outside at night... Can't wait. Please come to visit, you'd be very welcome.

Reflection

Sometimes things aren't quite what they seem. That's been true of my life recently, situations that I've made a snap judgment about have completely turned around, evolved, renewed themselves. On Wimbledon Common recently I stumbled upon this reflection in a pond at the bottom of two small inclines... The surface still as glass and the reflection an exercise in beauty.

Thanks to Sam for the photograph.

Sick

I'm a bit sick at the moment, approximately every 45 seconds a rasping sound leaves my chest, shortly followed by about ten seconds of hacking. I think this is what's known as a 'chesty cough'. It's interesting to note people's reactions. Mothers of small children in crowded tube carriages move their precious youngsters out of reach of my spluttering germs. I don't tell them that the little bundle of goodness is picking up more germs from the tube seat than from coughing commuters such as myself.

Being sick so far has changed my routine in the following ways:

• Sleep or lack of. I've kept myself awake most of the night with my incessant coughing.
• Benylin surely a class A substance?! I don't consider myself to have an addictive personality, but where treacley, sugar sweet, ethanol spiked cough syrup is concerned I don't trust myself.
• Christmas cards: when I should have been out having fun like ordinary people two weeks before Christmas, I managed to make all my cards. Writing them is another matter. Hmmm. Might email everyone instead.
• Food seems to have lost all its taste. It's seems a shame to eat it.

Anyway, when my life gets more interesting I promise to post something more exciting on this blog. Until then, excuse me while I cough my guts up.

Vision

‘without vision the people perish’

A famous person said that, so famous I can’t recollect who on earth it was. There’s truth in those five words, one syllable short of the iambic, yet perfectly balanced. True. For about a year my life has been stagnant, claustrophobic, ‘same-y’ (I discovered recently that our American friends don’t use that word, hence the quotation marks). I’ve walked down the same streets, eaten at the same restaurants, stared through the same sky in the city I love, but it’s all been largely without feeling anything much at all. Each week was just a prelude to the weekend. Each weekend a prelude to another week. Though the sun recedes and the leaves fall the feeling remained, until now. These days I’m so excited sleep alludes me, at 3am I’m thinking of a thousand things that are to come. Walking with you on Wimbledon Common I see scarlet and orange and gold and crushed poppy and pale grey and honey leaves, dappled light refracting through elegant trees, life coming up through the soft earth. I stretch out my arms and breathe in the earthy dampness. There’s a path through the trees, and my eyes are looking down it, sparkling.

Trees

I would really like a Christmas tree this year.

(Re)collection

A few years back, I found myself in a Weatherspoon’s pub at Leeds City Station. I forget what I was doing there, presumably I was about to catch a train and had some few minutes, or hours, to spare. Gorgeous Lizzy and I sat on stools, (this is hazily recollected) sharing a table with two middle-aged Yorkshire women, the path between student and local temporarily open. I had just bought a book called ‘Beyond the Binary’ and it was sitting temptingly on the shiny pub table, waiting for hungry eyes to devour words and thoughts and theory. The lady on our right noticed the book and harped up, ‘Beyond the bin – ary? What’s a bin – ary? Well I never, you young people today!’ ‘It just means opposite,’ I replied, probably a bit smug.

I probably thought I was really intellectual and informed then, now I just know I’ve got a lot to learn and theory never got anyone anywhere, apart from a mental hospital. I still have the book, I looked at it last night as I got into bed. Its blue cloth cover and gold embossed print stared across the room into tired eyes. It has lost its appeal, and I realised with amusement that the only association I have with this tome is Lizzy and I in a smoky pub in a train station, waiting to go somewhere, anywhere, nowhere…

Cinnamon honey

The sun setting gently over Paris yesterday afternoon had a hazy dusting of cinnamon and orange light, which calmly caressed clouds and long-since-painted grey buildings, narrow in their form, reaching up to the sky. For five minutes, no more, I stood on the sixth etage of the Centre Pompidou, nose to the plate glass, with my thin, papery hands blocking out the interior strip gallery lighting. Gratitude poured out – a quasi-religious experience – towards the distance. As far as I could see the nutmeg light was fading, pouring its truth and safety through smeary glass, tired eyes and shiny skin.

I’m safe here, with you.

You muppet

A phone rings. A short pause.

J: ‘Hello?’
A: ‘Hi it’s me.
J: ‘Hi, how are you? Why are you calling in the middle of the day? I’m at work.’
A: ‘I was just calling to say I’m on the train.’
J: ‘Which train?’
A: ‘The train to London.’
J: ‘Oh – why are you coming to London?’
A: ‘To see you, you muppet!’
J: ‘Oh.’
Brain audibly chugs.
J: ‘When did we arrange this?’
A (exasperated): ‘Last week.’

Sigh.

Oh dear. I used to pride myself on having a good memory. Of late, my brain has developed craters. Not just small holes through which I lose phone numbers, forget to take my lunch to work. No, these are huge gapping caverns that swallow whole conversations, situations, meetings, events. Maybe I should start doing the sudoku – isn’t that meant to prevent dementia?

Weather

Lately I’ve been wandering around wondering whether I’m becoming obsessed with the weather. Whether I’m one of those auld before their time old people who use up to a thousand words a day chatting about the heat, or lack, the rain, or lack. This weekend there was the ‘threat of snow’. Next the BBC weather site reported that the place I was heading to for the weekend had ‘driving sleet’ forecast. Neither prediction came true. It just rained a bit and was so cold my knees wouldn’t bend and my friend Alex had to help me over a fallen tree. Temperature has become a perpetual enemy. Like a temperamental gas fire that needs banging and stroking to get it working, I’m at the mercy of heat, cold hands that turn yellow and lose all feeling, lack of warm socks, too hot legs under thermals. Maybe I should live somewhere where it’s sunny all year round… but there’d be nothing to write about.

Wisdom?

Jim Carrey, in a recent interview in Playboy magazine said:

Heaven is on the other side of that feeling you get when you're sitting on the couch and you get up and make a triple-decker sandwich. It's on the other side of that, when you don't make the sandwich. It's about sacrifice.... It's about giving up the things that basically keep you from feeling. That's what I believe, anyway. I'm always asking, "What am I going to give up next?" Because I want to feel.

Decisions, decisions

Is anyone as bad at making decisions as me, I wonder? I have absolutely no faith in my own paper-thin, fickle judgement, especially this week. I’m caught in the middle of one of those ‘between times’ where I’m really not sure what to do. It’s no small matter, and whatever decision I finally come to (assuming I don’t curl up and die of cold in the indecision) will affect pretty much all of my life. I’m being pulled by a string through each ear, looping through my brain, and the pull is tugging a different way every single day. People say all kinds of things, some kind, some heartfelt, some selfish, some wise, some crap nonsense. I’m grateful for them all, but I need to make my mind up. Trouble is it just won’t stay down.

Wintering

It is winter here.

If you get the reference then you're more like me than you thought!

Guy Fawks Night

Some gorgeous photos of this year's fire and noise celebrations at Dan's house. He puts on a good bash!

Cheer up!

A friend sent me a selection of 'the worst album covers ever'. This was my personal favourite!

Belly to the moon

Did you know that tuna fish
Float up to the surface –
Belly to the moon –
Just to cool their heart down?
‘Cos it helps them just to think
About the hurtful things.
I guess it’s just one way
To get them some sedation.

Emiliana Torrini, ‘Tuna Fish’

I suppose we all need to cool our hearts down sometimes… the words floated through the centre of my skull today, between doing what felt like the sixtieth edit of a book I’ve worked on for two years… Reaching the surface must be the most incredible thing for a fish. The promise of light, huge flat rays penetrating the rippling surface and reflecting off anything in its way. The sea is full of life, ever-moving, ever-changing, evermore. There’s nothing stagnant about the ocean. Those tuna fish taking a few seconds to float under the midday sun must be the luckiest creatures in the world…

Tired :-(

Hmmm. Last night was a write-off. Normally, I’m fab at sleeping, snoozing, drowsing, napping, shutting my eyes, drifting off to wherever, whenever. It’s a rare occasion when I lie awake for longer than ten minutes before succumbing to slumber. I’m sure I’ve slept through storms, car chases, police helicopters, endless arguing neighbours. My sister is the same. We’d probably win a family sleep-off. Anyway, last night was an anomaly.

12.25 got into bed
12.35 turned off light and chucked book on floor
1am still awake
2am get up for a drink
3am read three chapters of ‘The Sea’ by John Banville (v. disappointing use of propositions)
4am still awake
4.15 flatmate gets up to go to Devon. Listen to water in shower.
4.45 think just about get to sleep
5am rudely awaken by phone call wondering if I’m a taxi firm. ‘what?’ I say, before hanging up
6am realise have been awake all night and will have rubbish day as result
6.10 drift off
6.45 alarm goes off
6.46 turn off alarm in horror
7am realise boiler man is coming any minute
7.10am get up
7.35am realise was too excited to sleep all night!
8am hope adrenalin really exists.

Yasai Itameru

Today I ate
Yasai itameru with
Green tea, delicious.

Rice noodles, spicy
Coconut, coriander
Tongue swollen, alive.

Wintering

Nothing and everything is the same. I wake from half-sleep to a cold nose and heavy limbs, sinking into the cold mattress. I’m so cold that if I even move an inch I’m afraid the steely air will reach through my thin cotton trousers and penetrate the core of my body, and if that happens my chances of getting up are zero. I press snooze several times and drowse, eventually facing the inevitable – rushing upstairs, half-blind, scratching around for a mug. Water bubbles up inside the kettle, and there’s a sharp smell as a thick slice of lemon flops onto thick wood. It’s winter here.

Leche/Latte/Milk

This year’s birthday was Lush (initial cap intended!) Much better than the Bridget Jones’ style crying-in-the-bath episode last year. I took the day off (should be a human right), and spent a luscious, indulgent afternoon on the South Bank, breathing in the air swirled around by passers-by and tall London busses on Waterloo Bridge (‘with tears in my eyes...’*). I saw the Jeff Wall photography exhibition at Tate Modern. I studied some of his stuff in American Photo-texts for my MA, and I’d forgotten how clever he is at distorting reality so intently that it comes full circle and appears real again. Take the image Milk.

At first glance it’s a shot in a lifetime, the hapless photographer happens upon a vagabond cracking open a lively carton of milk outside an anonymous looking building. That first reading/viewing is an illusion though. All of Wall’s work is set-up and directed like a movie. Even so, the message is still as strong. I kinda love this photo. I read it as a commentary on the eclectic nature of city life. The only action in the image is the milk, which we see in full flight spraying out of the carton. It’s beautiful, a white fan reaching up to the sky. Of course, a second later the liquid will stain the man’s clothes and run over the clean paving stones. We’re privileged to be caught in a moment that is not-quite, never going to reach its destination. The man is looking away from the action, and in doing so he chooses to occupy a space outside of the image. He’s every bit involved and every bit detached from his surroundings. Like so many in the city, life carries on around him, just inside his peripheral vision. Part of the action, yet completely passive, disengaged. ‘Love it!’ as my friend T would say!

* Ref to a Wendy Cope poem called 'Jenny'

Art

There's an awesome exhibition at the Hayward Gallery at the moment. It's called 'Universal Experience: Art, Life and the Tourists' Eye' and is an amalgamation of photography, film, installation art, sculpture and general strangenesss. They have one piece that I've seen before in many a modern art gallery in the states - it consists of a pile of sweets piled up in a corner. Visitors are invited to take a sweet and therefore actively engage with the artwork. The weight of sweets at the start of the exhibition is the weight of the artist's partner, who died of AIDS. As the shiny-wrapped candies diminish there's a continual remembrance of the diminished life of one man. It made me think of communion and thousands of people carrying around a symbol of a man's death digesting in their stomachs.

Scarfing Again

I've started to knit a scarf. I merrily chose wool in the habberdashery department of a local store on Saturday, and with a few false starts with casting on (I can never quite remember how to do it), I managed to get going. The wool is kinda tricky, it has all these little bits sticking out which require continue rescuing from the stitches, but I was determined. I spent two concentrated hours on the train to London clattering grey needles together, and having completed about six inches I was getting a bit smug. Ah, I thought, I'll be an expert! I'll knit everyone a hat for Christmas! I'll impress them with cables and pom poms! I'll get labels made and sew them onto the plethora of finished products... That was until I realised that I'd managed to get from 25 stiches to 52 in the space of about 20 rows. I think I have more practise to do. I've ripped it all out and am going to start again. Hmm.

Hooks

It was Graham Greene who wrote ‘Hate lay like boredom over the evening ahead.’ On reading those words from an earlier blog again, I’m overcome with the dreadful realisation that boredom lies like hate over my life this week, generously covering the minutes, hours, evenings, weekends, weeks ahead. I’m devoid of stimulation, creativity and newness and the old paranoia has begun to creep in. The rain is hitting the window vengefully, and the pounding and darkness sweeping through the room adds to my glum mood. I’m seldom this bored. Something, or someone usually hooks through the grey and tugs on my hair with a word, photo, story, recipe or exhibition, and my attention is turned towards iridescent light, colour, texture and gorgeous paragraphs flow through and around and into my ever-decreasing mind. I’d see the light transmigrate through the twinkling rolled-glass on the window, and my eyes would turn to see doweling shaped lines of sunlight stretching through the trees. The right corner of my mouth would turn, ever-so-slightly upwards and the stiff air retained in tight lungs would gush out, leaving a lighter, gentler being on the heavy couch.

But today there are no such distractions and I’m alone with myself, the loneliest kind of aloneness. Mindlessly, I hit ‘next blog’, and there I am. The hook curves into my mind, and for the next ten minutes I’m hooked reading about sewing and appliqué, knitting and small children. For similar creative refreshment, check out this blog, and these fantastically gorgeous little people:

More haiku

I definitely
Want to see you again – thought
I should let you know.

Turning leaves

It’s my birthday in exactly one week. In seven days time I’ll be turning twenty-six. (I wonder why we say ‘turning’ instead of ‘getting to’ or ‘becoming’. Turning reminds me of people turning in their graves.) When I was younger, well, maybe 13 or 14, I used to imagine what life would be like when I ‘grew up’, and I would visually see a kind of ladder with each year as a rung, and there would be all kinds of pictures of things sitting on the rungs. Like for 23 I’d have a cool job wearing grey pinstripes and tying my hair back in a slick professional style. On rung 25 I would imagine me being married, and at 30 there’d be like three kids and at 32 holidays in Australia and a big house. How little reality there is when you’re 13!

Anyway, the purpose of this blog was to say that if any of you gorgeous people were in any way thinking of buying me a birthday present (and I really don’t expect any at all, and if you've just clicked 'next blog' then you really won't be) then please, please, please could you either:

Give the money to the poor or
Get a book token?

I know homeless people might spend your hard-earned cash on drugs, and book tokens are boring and disappointingly difficult to wrap up nicely, but all I would like in the whole world is like half of Foyles, or Borders, or that cool bookshop called Pan on the Fulham Road that stacks its books really crazily in piles like cry out to be knocked over like dominoes. There’s a list in my head of stuff I want to read, and it’s getting longer and longer. Thanks for reading. Reading for thanks.

Gassing late at night

Tonight I got home to a house full of wood dust and cardboard and furniture in strange places (we’re getting renovations done), and after twenty minutes sitting on a dusty sofa half reading Survivor by Chuck Palahniuk and half watching The West Wing (which my flatmate is completely addicted to, she’s like hooked up with a venflon or something), I felt so filthy that I decided to have a nice warm bath. We’ve got one of those really satisfying Victorian baths that is about five and a half feet long, so I can actually lie down in it and my toes only just reach the end. It must be really dreadful for the environment when it’s full up with steaming H20, but it’s a luxury I really appreciate, honestly. As I was running the bath water I realised there wasn’t any steam and the smell of Radox muscle soak had taken on a gas like odour… It turned out that the boiler had stopped working and there was gas leaking out from the extractor pipe. Do you know what though? I used to work for British Gas and am a legend in the gas department. (Though ‘legend’ is open to interpretation, and no, I don’t do house calls.) A simple investigation found that the builders had been chucking their rubbish (wood, old carpets, smashed up kitchen tables) down the front of the house, and this plethora of scrap had blocked up the flue pipe! Ten minutes in damp air outside heaving underlay layered with grime and trying not to rip my (new and unfortunately too big) Earl jeans on numerous bits of gripper rod, and the pipe was visible once more. A quick fiddle with the pilot light and we-hey! Hot water. it was actually one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in ages and I realised there must be immense satisfaction in manual labour, fixing things. I only really fix my hair. Anyway, the moral of this story is: always hire a skip.

Sunset

My dad sent me this photo the other day. It kinda makes me smile when I get stuff from my Dad on email, because I always know it's taken him ages to send it... Anyway, it was worth it, take a look at the photo and then read the text below.



The photograph attached was taken by the crew on board the Columbia during its last mission, on a cloudless day. The picture is of Europe and Africa when the sun is setting. Half of the picture is in night. The bright dots you see are the cities lights. The top part of Africa is the Sahara Desert. Note that the lights are already on in Holland, Paris, and Barcelona, and that's it's still daylight in Dublin, London, Lisbon, and Madrid. The sun is still shining on the Strait of Gibraltar. The Mediterranean Sea is already in darkness. In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean you can see the Azores Islands; below them to the right are the Madeira Islands; a bit below are the Canary Islands; and further south, close to the farthest western point of Africa, are the Cape Verde Islands. Note that the Sahara is huge and can be seen clearly both during Daytime and night time. To the left, on top, is Greenland, totally frozen.

Edited

The editors were ace, even though I felt faint just as they played their opening song and had to sit at the back on a step for most of the gig. They pretty much played the album and a couple a new songs. ‘All Sparks’ was cool. From chatting to some mates I was surprised how many people haven’t heard of them, so for more info click here.

Editors

Yay! I'm off to see these guys tonight at The Astoria, pretty cool. I wonder how it'll compare to seeing them in front of about forty people in the Square Pie Tent at Glastonbury earlier this year. There we were, eating chicken pie for breakfast, well, brunch, resting our weary calf muscles from wading through knee-deep mud, when a couple of guys got up and played an acoustic set, complete with wellies. They were awesome and I was hooked.

I'm kinda chuffed about the irony of liking a band named after my profession.

Tales of Loss

This weekend, my mobile 'phone decided to take a break. Maybe it was fed up of ringing, beeping, waking me up in the morning and storing a random assortment of strange images on its memory card. For whatever reason its little screen stayed black, and it stopped working. At first, I looked at it incredulously and began a little game (often played) of turning it off and back on again. Only this time nothing happened. The black screen was still staring at me.

Never mind, I thought, it's just a 'phone and it can be fixed.

Thing is, it's not just a 'phone - it's kinda my life ... in that little silver lump of moulded plastic the size of a bar of soap lies my contact with the outside world. I couldn't go to a party because I didn't have the address, and the numbers of all those I could have called to get it were stored inside. It's weird, I feel like I've lost a friend... or I have no friends, I can't decide which. At least ten times a day I reach into my bag to check for messages and missed calls, but the handbag is devoid of items the size of a bar of soap this week. Maybe I'll get used to this and become one of those irritating people who only have a landline and are never in, those you have to arrange to meet at precise times because there's no way of texting to say you'll be ten minutes late. Hmmm. It's a thought.

Another go...

Trying to tie up
Shoelaces with cold fingers makes
My heart long for spring.

Haiku

why aren’t there more
syllables in this wretched
poetic form, I ask?

--

you can’t do much with
five, seven, five, a season -
three lines, that’s the end.

--

give me a sonnet
anyday and I’ll laugh through
couplets and rhyming.

Journeying

Familarity breeds claustrophobia, especially in the city. This weekend I had the fortune of leaving the smoke behind to cross county after county by train and car. It's a sad fact of life that I find car journeys more than a bit exciting, more than likely due to their rarity. Changing gear and sitting at trafic lights in a private metal box has long been replaced with the clatter of a tube carriage, or the hum of displaced air past cold ears as I pedal my way through grid-locked streets. On Saturday evening between 8 and 9 o'clock, I sat silently, alone in the back of a blue VW Golf streaming through Gloucestershire in the twilight. The sky played out a light show for an audience of one, wispy grey clouds and twinkly stars fixed my eyes without blinking. With the simplicity of the sky and familiar white noise, sleep came gently.

Raining Again

"I'm just kind of tired. Like a monkey in the rain."

Haruki Murakami, Norweigian Wood

Dramarama

He smiles, the taste of Colgate fresh in his mouth, and all is right in the world. Her reaction is normal, returning the favour perfectly with straight white teeth. They walk next to each other in the twilight. In thirty-seven minutes exactly, it will be dark and they’ll sit cote-a-cote on blue crushed velvet seats as a mediocre badly-adapted drama plays out before them. He booked the tickets a week ago on a friend’s recommendation. Theatre isn’t his thing, but she said once that she liked it, and he filed the thought away, just in case.

“Have you been to the Old Vic before?”
“No, I haven’t – though I’ve always wanted to…”
“Oh, you’re gonna love it. I’ve seen loads of stuff here. Kevin Spacey is the artistic director.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, did you hear about The Philadelphia Story – it was a bit of a flop in the end, all the reviews slated it. You must have heard about it?”

Drat. His ignorance is poking straight through the chest of his Ted Baker shirt, and she she’ll be faced with the naked truth that when he said he liked plays, what he actually meant was he saw Puss in Boots once when he was nine, and he’s only trying to get the girl.

Haiku

I've developed a fascination for all things Japanese, including haiku. Here's my first, precarious attempt:

Dusk falls. A blanket
Of ash. Cool shoulders desire
Thin cotton v-neck.

- Fire -

Arcade fire,
Sun rising,
Clouds disipate.
Gentle footsteps,
Warm boots,
Tired arches.

Soho

Soho. Tuesday. Autumn. 7pm.
Girls in squeaky knee-high leather boots,
Yet too-warm coats slung casually over fragile arms.
The last of the sunlight lowers behind Autumn’s curtain.
King prawns. Phad Thai noodles, eaten quickly.
Alone,By an open window.
Crisp Pinot Grigio in a bowl-shaped glass.
Tongue pulsating with chilli sauce.
Bench seating runs into fellow lone diner:
Male. 20s. Dark hair (Toni & Guy). Duck curry. Thai Calamari.
Craving newness and a way through this cavernous life, this maze of a city.
Wherever I go, you’re there. You’re eating noodles with bamboo chopsticks.
Reaching into Louis Vuitton leather for change.

Seasons

How can I feel homesick for a place I've never lived? There's something disctinctly Manhatten about London at the moment. The way the cold is beginning to wrap its fingers delicately around my waist whilst the sun strokes my face. His rays have changed. They're blinding now.

I feel cold air on my skin and am grateful for cotton, polyester, rayon. I try on a wooly hat in Urban Outfitters - to buy it would be premature, but I play with the idea. Central Park on a crisp Autumn morning, auburn leaves scrunch underfoot.

In my head the seasons jump from summer to winter overnight. I'm expectant, as if waiting for a long-awaited visitor... I have the necessary objects ready: blankets draped across the end of the bed, black opaque tights and gentle knitted jumpers. I'll push three pairs of Havianas and two sundresses to the back of the wardrobe and move from pale pink to chocolate brown in the space of 24 hours. I'll dream of New York, steam coming up from the Subway, mittens wrapped around hot coffee... winter.

Countries

The wonders of modern technology. If you have nothing to do on a Thursday evening, like me as I'm waiting for some friends to go for a drink, you can go on the web and make a map of all the countries you've visited in the world. I thought this was pretty cool, until it told me I've only been to 7% of the world... that's really pathetic! And only went to Scotland on holiday this year!

Thanks to Paul for the tip on this one!

Diary (mis)management

Today I spent a good ten minutes on the phone trying to arrange to meet a friend for a drink. Or a coffee. Or dinner. Or five minutes. Or even a longer phone call. It kinda went like this:
Hi!
Hi! It's been ages!
Yeah, we should meet up.
Definitely. How about Tuesday?
No, can't do Tuesdays.
Next Thursday's no good - work thing.
This weekend?
Hmmm, got friends coming up on Saturday.
How's a week Friday for you?
Oh, that's my friend's birthday.
Right, two weeks on Monday?
No, doing a course on Mondays now.
Ok. I've got it. 14th October? Any good?
Yep, suits me!
Bit far away.
Yeah, but best to get it in the diary.
Might have to cancel though... think I might have a launch that night.
Never mind.
Well, catch up properly then.
Yeah, really looking forward to it.
Great, take care.
You too.
Bye!

Yeah, whatever!

You guys...

I don't know if I tell you guys this enough, but I love you! I love you all - my friends that is. If you've just clicked 'next blog' and hit upon my rambling, then I probably don't love you, as I'm not that comfortable with strangers, but if I do know you I want you to know that I have some of the best friends in the world. Between you, you're wisdom personified. Thanks everyone.

Feeling faint...

Today I visited a friend who's very sick in hospital. He's on oxygen, bloody venflon protuding out of his arm, machines bleeping. The bay he's in holds five mostly unconscious looking patients, and he's the youngest by miles. Somewhere nearby a woman is crying and screaming, "I don't want to go anywhere, just let me die. Don't make me move, please. Just let me die." A white-haired corpse of an old lady next to my friend doesn't open her eyes the whole time I'm there, though a rasping cough speaks of life -just - hanging on in her veins.

I'm scared of hospitals. I find it difficult to sit in the doctors' waiting room without feeling faint. Today was a test. I just about overcame my fear with friendship. At various points myself and the other visitor are ushered out of the cubicle. We wait at the nurse's station, making small talk, and I'm overcome by a wave of nausea and have to sit down, head between my legs. It's embarassing and completely psychological. I think about leaving, getting straight into the lift and walking outside. Yet I know if I succomb I'll have angry tears cascading down hot cheeks. I feel stupid. My friend is here through no fault of his own, gasping for breath, sweating, nil by mouth, and I can't even last half an hour. The other vistor chats normally, as if we're at a cafe on a Sunday afternoon, and after a few minutes the feeilng passes and I'm ok again. We wait for the consultants to finish their ward round and then reappear at the bedside. We chat about insignificant things, my face must betray my fear. The boys chat about the cricket and I smile, I know nothing about wickets, overs and LBW. He looks better and sits up for a few minutes and starts reading a magazine. Things feel normal for half a second and I rub his feet under the scratchy hospital blanket. The conversation dries up and as if on cue his whole family turn up for visiting. It's 5pm, they must all have rushed here from work. I quickly gather up my stuff and stretch out a hand. He squeezes and our eyes lock. His say hope, and I wish mine could say the same.

All you need is Graham Greene

"Hate lay like boredom over the evening ahead. I had committed myself: without love I would have to go through the gestures of love. I felt the guilt before I had committed the crime, the crime of drawing the innocent into my own maze. [A kiss] may be nothing... but at any time it may prove to be everything."

The End of the Affair

Cranes

A lot of what I write on this blog has an underlying subconscious reference to the loneliness of this great city. A friend commented that these words and phrases, clauses and subtle gestures were a verbal commentary on Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, above. The thing is though, I love being a fly in the ointment of the city, it's the annonymity that has the intrinsic appeal. I have heaps of friends - I love you guys more than you know - yet the privacy of the crowd is a constant comfort. I can walk through Green Park alone on a Sunday afternoon and lie on cool grass whilst reading the paper without anyone bothering me. I'm part of the chattering crowd, we're the red, blue, pink, yellow paper cranes hanging from century-old branches. Eventually the rain will soften the paper, colour will drip down onto the grass, sunlight will devour the pigment and we'll fall, gracefully to our end. Trodden into the ground from whence we came.

Saturday, 5.53pm

Are you scared of dying?
I’m on the verge of a fundamental lifestyle change.
It’s 4am, we’ve just got home and it’s almost light.
Do you like these ones? Too secretary?
Did you know the tube was closed today?
This is just between ourselves.
I think you’re hot.
Ow, get off my foot!
You don’t understand.
I love you.
Do you have the Hard-Fi album?
No, I don’t eat cheese.
If you carry on doing that I’ll be really pissed off with you.
Can we go now?
It’s one-thirty already.
I’m gonna make an almond torte.
How was the wedding?
I’m going to work at 5pm.
It’s all too much.
How can one person be so ….?

Back again

Ok, I've been away for a while.
You may have noticed.
You may not have noticed.
Maybe you missed me.
Maybe you didn't notice enough
To miss me.
That's ok.
I kinda missed you,
But this thing called:
Life
Got in the way.
But I'm back again now,
And it feels good.